I never even knew Minecraft had an ending until now.
It didn't for the longest time, and then one day suddenly there was this whole dragon thingy
> It didn't for the longest time
mid 2009-end 2011 is not "the longest time", c'mon!
I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you
281–290 of 778 posts
Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Im honestly chocked that people react so negatively to this piece. Yes, the author expresses many negative and self centered emotions. He is very clear about that. It is part of the story. It is a story about being a flawed person. I sympathize with him. I loved this piece. I hope he truly did let go of all the hangups he described. And it does seem that he actually did sell the the rights of use to microsoft, making…
Why would you think it's socially acceptable to be a flawed person? Flaws aren't something we excuse just because people express them. Expressing them doesn't absolve you of them. They are still there, as flaws, and therefore people react to them as flaws.
Do you have no flaws?
Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But it’s not accurate to say he’s greedy and entitled I didn't say he was greedy; by the sounds of it he's happy with very little. It is 100% correct to say he's entitled. He doesn't want to do the legwork of determining the terms, instead he expects that someone else does, and in a way that protects his interests. He feels entitled to that.
> I didn't say he was greedy Yes, sorry, that was in other posts and it got blurred. I did not want to put words into your mouth. > He doesn't want to do the legwork of determining the terms, instead he expects that someone else does He explains why he did not involve his agent, and also that he does not expect anyone to do it. Otherwise he’d have plenty of opportunities to do it. He sounds entitled in that he has we…
He didn't want to involve his agent, but he didn't want to negotiate the contract himself either. He just wanted the purity of the art. Which I can understand and admire, but it was also contract work. And his unwillingness to see it for what it was, made the whole thing incredibly awkward for everybody.
In the end, his struggles seem to have lead to a lot of personal growth, and that's great, and he does seem to understand that he mostly created this problem himself, and could easily have prevented it by involving his agent. But I'm not so sure that he understands that this was never about friendship; he was hired to write an ending, had a profound artistic connection with the guy who hired him, and somehow he seemed to think that entitled him to a friendship rather than a business relationship. I'm not sure he understands that that was the core misunderstanding here, and that his belief in a friendship that was really a business relationship, made the business relationship really awkward and dysfunctional.
Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you
#284I feel for the guy, making a living off of art is difficult. However, with an extensive email chain explaining the story was written as the ending of Minecraft, even going into detail about how it was to be displayed in game, an agreed upon offer (if a bit vague), and then an exchange of funds - with no immediate attempt to return said funds. I'm no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like a legally binding agreement. > So…
I think your focus on the financials, which was a very small part of the article is misguided. I'm under the assumption that the article is part of the author trying to "piece things together" - as a part 2 of his spiritual journey where he concluded: > I wrote a story for a friend, but in the end, he didn't treat me like a friend, and I'm hurt. By accepting this premise, these are examples of when he expected to be…
It’s fair to focus on financial when the author spends the entire article mulling over legal action because he feels hard done by, and then ends the article begging for money in the form of donations.
Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you
#285Wow a lot of HN commenters are so cynical of the writer and very quick to discount the value of the End poem.
Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you
#286I feel for the guy, making a living off of art is difficult. However, with an extensive email chain explaining the story was written as the ending of Minecraft, even going into detail about how it was to be displayed in game, an agreed upon offer (if a bit vague), and then an exchange of funds - with no immediate attempt to return said funds. I'm no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like a legally binding agreement. > So…
>already a hundred-million-dollar game, but with no ending
Just gonna say it, the game was better without the rushed ending anyway and the amount it sold before it had one is testament to that.
Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I was one of the five people who had helped create this strangest of games
He is, undoubtedly, one of the people who worked on a part of the game, yes. That counts as "helping create the game". And claiming to have "helped create the game" is not the same as claiming to be "the creator" of the game.
It absolutely reads as if his contribution is significant enough that he should be be considered one of the creators.
> giving money to back-office staff who had just arrived in the last year, and had zero creative input into the game [...] I had helped him create the actual game
The way he puts down regular employees, making it sound like his poem is obviously more important than whatever a mere employee does.
Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Mojang subsequently wanted to purchase that copyright and hence why they sent the contract for £1 to be signed. That is the move by Mojang that I didn't understand. They were about to be paid 2.5 billion. Why not offer 1 million for the signed contract? They could easily afford that, and with his financial troubles at the time, Julian would probably have signed it. And he'd have missed out on his subsequent persona…
> Why not offer 1 million for the signed contract? Because they believed (erroneously or not) that they already had paid for the thing the contract was about, and were offering a "peppercorn" payment for the signature itself to make the exchange complete. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercorn_(law)
...and people wonder why I think contract law is as damn close to a poson pill as you can have in something brazenly referred to as a justice system.
Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
My interpretation of the legal status is that the author is entitled to accept the €20k as payment for his time but that amount doesn't constitute payment for the copyright of the work. Mojang subsequently wanted to purchase that copyright and hence why they sent the contract for £1 to be signed. Julian believed the copyright was worth more and so rejected the offer. All that is to say that if my interpretation is co…
> Mojang subsequently wanted to purchase that copyright and hence why they sent the contract for £1 to be signed. That is the move by Mojang that I didn't understand. They were about to be paid 2.5 billion. Why not offer 1 million for the signed contract? They could easily afford that, and with his financial troubles at the time, Julian would probably have signed it. And he'd have missed out on his subsequent persona…
There was something similar with the soundtrack of Doom Eternal [1]. They were also about to get paid billions by Microsoft and didn't pay the composer.
Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you
#290When so much money is involved very few friendships or relationships will survive. You can't morally steer someone into the "right" direction by sending frustrated emails when there's generational wealth on the line for the other parties involved. The author should have put his feelings aside and involved a lawyer.
If they were really friends this conversation would have been had candidly in a social setting